


For These Words He Won’t Come Around Here

by awkwardCerberus



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam Survives, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blatant References to the "ADAM" Vine, Keith and Adam Actually Know Each Other, Let Shiro Cry 2018, M/M, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, PLEASE WATCH SEASON 7 FIRST PLEATSE, Season/Series 07 Spoilers, Unbury Your Gays, bc fuck canon, just in case, subtle references to The Bodyguard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 05:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15657009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardCerberus/pseuds/awkwardCerberus
Summary: Adam isn't dead. His ship blew up, he crashed, but he didn't die. When he comes too, a pair of Galra ar dragging him towards a cell.Or, an Adam Survives fic bc tbh I’m a lil upset he died. Takes place about a week or so after that speech Shiro gives in 7.13.





	For These Words He Won’t Come Around Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rest_In_Spaghetti_Never_Forgetti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rest_In_Spaghetti_Never_Forgetti/gifts).



> LISTEN YALL SEASON 7 WAS WILD I LOVED IT IT ATE MY WHOLE ASS AND THEN SPIT IT OUT AND OWNS IT NOW
> 
> usually i will have watched a season like6 times before i write so all my shits like hyper correct, but i started this immediately after finishing season 7 so names and details and stuff might not be totally accurate but hey man i felt a moral obligation to bring this man back from the dead. Also this isnt actually important to the story at all, but I do HC Adam as Muslim in case yall had questions about his last name. All the show gave us was “Adam W.” 
> 
> This chapter doesn’t have a lot of Adam in it. I know I know i said this was an Adashi, but this first chapter has a lot of everything else BUT, so i promise this is all just set up, the ship will come .
> 
> Title and chapter titles are from “Sense of Home” by Harrison Storm

At his two o’clock high, a blast takes out Anderson’s left wing entirely, and he spirals down towards the ground, screaming mayday until he explodes halfway down. Coming around his eleven o’clock, Santorini is being tailed by at least four fighters. She begs for an assist, but the fire is too heavy, and she too ends in a ball of fire. When he rolls to the left, Adam sees Volante flying at full throttle towards the bridge of this giant alien ship, his communications are disabled, and his fighter collides with the bridge in silence. The metal was barely dented.

Brahambat, Miller, Cossick, Laramy, Creech, Jeong.

All good lives lost because they thought they could take on warlords from another galaxy.

The target lock on Adam’s console beeps at him and he can see them from the corner of his eye. Two at his eight o’clock, three to his four o’clock. He rolls right and they’re still there. He pulls up and rolls a hard right going around the back of one of the larger ships ( ~~something Takashi showed him how to do a long time ago~~ ) and they’re still locked on to him.

One of the ones on his four opens fire. The other four follow suit.

“All units, this is Wahab—“

A blast clipped his right wing. Another one hit his tail.

“I have five on me! I can’t shake them! Repeat—“

His fighter fell to the left and an alarm went off. His right was was totally gone. His left engine wasn’t responding. He was spiraling.

“Mayday, mayday! Leader is going down! I’m going—fuck! Can anyone hear me—“

The ground was coming up fast, a lost closer and a lot more…purple than it should be. The controls weren’t responding, even when he pulled up on the stick nothing happened. He was going to die like that. The nose of his plane hit first, the entire cockpit felt like it bent backwards as pieces of metal and glass imploded around him. The rear of his plane was too high in the air; he was going to tip over.

Some basic human instinct tried to throw Adam’s arms in front of his face, but he couldn’t feel them. He looked up and saw the remaining tail of his plane curling above him like a scorpion, rocking the cockpit forward with its momentum. The burnt metal was groaning around him, and everything pitched to the side.

Adam didn’t want to die afraid.

 

 

The voices around him are strange. Deep, harsh, making sounds he doesn’t understand. He jumps under his skin and suddenly he can’t tell if he’s awake or not, its so dark. His arms are being held tightly over his head, and God, they _hurt._ He has to be awake then, because no dream ever stung like that. He can feel the floor moving beneath him. He’s being dragged.

One of the figures holding him looks down at him, eyes glowing bright yellow. He’s Galra, but Adam can’t make out anything past that; he can’t see past his own nose without his glasses. Shit, wait…why doesn’t he have his glasses—

_All units, this is Wahab_

_I can’t shake them_

_Mayday, mayday_

Adam’s chest seized up and he could’t breath anymore. He tried to take in air, but instead he made a whining noise high in his throat. The loss of his glasses is so insignificant now that it doesn’t even register as a problem anymore. He remembers they’re all dead, all of them that he’d trained with for years, because they thought they could win and the couldn’t. He remembers he was shot down and he should be dead too but why is he being dragged?

He make another noise and one of the people dragging him growls at him and pulls on his arm. It feels like fire and ice and a thousand needles are trying to stab at every nerve in him, and he screams with it. Adam looks up and where his arms are is a mess of red.

The arms of his flight suit are shredded. Bits of metal and glass stick out in gross chunks across his skin like rocks in the water. He can’t see well enough to make them out, but he can feel them all. His hand wont move when he tells it to, but the absolute agony that comes back down into him tells him enough. A darker part of him wants to keep staring at them, but his captors don’t allow that.

They stop at a door that opens silently and throw Adam inside like the dead weight that he is. The room goes dark again when the door shuts and for a short while, he thinks he is alone.

“Professor Wahab? Oh my God—Professor!”

A girl runs out of a dark corner where she’d been hiding, and in the small light that comes through the window of the door, Adam can see three more small shapes huddled together in the blackness. One of them is sobbing softly, the voice that comes in the whimpers sounds young, feminine, a child and not a cadet.

The one who called to him puts a hand on his shoulder and rolls him onto his back gently. She’s close enough that he can make out her face…she’s a teenager, bright red hair shaved at the sides and longer on top. He recognizes her, he used to teach her class. She waves her hand at the corner and snaps at someone else. A boy leans over him this time, younger than the girl by a handful of years, and the same bright red, short hair; Adam doesn’t know him, but the girl does. They’re both still in their Garrison uniforms, the standard orange and white ones, nothing for combat. The third person is still crying in the corner.

“You’re…you were in my class,” Adam thinks he’s lucky to still be able to say anything right now, even that rough whisper, “Marissa, right?”

She smiles, beaming, “yes sir! I was. This is my brother Donny, sir. He was still in his first year."

The boy, Donny, looks like he’s about to be sick. He’s staring at Adam’s arms, and so is Marissa. Her smiles disappears and she closes her eyes and takes a breath. Adam looks down at his arms again, and they look worse from this angle somehow. He can see more of them now, more glass, more metal, more blood. His right arm is worse than his left by far (at least he can feel his left hand. He know there isn’t much to be done for his right arm other than a merciful amputation at some point), and he can feel a sticky puddle forming on the floor under his elbow. He doesn’t think its likely for a skilled surgeon to walk through the door right now, and neither of the cadets would know anything above basic first aid.

“Okay, okay, um, we’re gonna help you, Professor,” Marissa says; Adam appreciates her positive attitude at least. She points to the corner with the child and takes off her uniform jacket, “Donny get the water. And I need your jacket. And get rid of his sleeves.”

Donny nods, frightened, but obeys. He lays his jacket by her’s and picks up a small tin cup of water from the floor. It looks like its all they have. They shouldn’t be wasting it on him, he’s not going to be alive long enough to need it. He hears a rip, and looks at Marissa. She’s got their jackets in her lap and she’s tearing them into strips with her teeth. It takes Adam a long moment to catch up with what’s actually happening. She’s making bandages, and the water is to clean out his wounds—they’re actually going to try to help him.

He doesn’t get a chance to protest this, something pulls on a long shard of metal in his left arm, dug deep into his muscle and he yelps like a dog. It makes Donny jump but it doesn’t stop him. He pulls his bottom lip in between his teeth and goes back to trying to clear away the remains of the suit as best he can. He stops suddenly and turns to Marissa, hands shaking as he holds the fabric in his fists, “I…I can’t get it higher than his elbow.”

He points at Adam’s arm, and Marissa and Adam follow his finger to Adam’s arm. A long, skinny piece of metal is lanced through the flesh of his bicep, with at least an inch sticking out on either side of the skin. Marissa stops tearing fabric and gives him a gentle smile, “that’s okay. Can you help with the right arm?”

Her brother nods again and walks around Adam to kneel by his right arm. It must be easier this time, because it doesn’t feel like it takes as long, and this time, there is no snagging pain. Marissa tears a short, fat piece of fabric from the sleeve of one of the jackets and dips it in the cup of water. She wrings it out and hold it out to her brother. Everyone is looking at her now for instruction, even Adam.

“Donny, take this. You’re gonna keep pressure on everything when I…when I pull stuff out,” the nod in confirmation at each other. Marissa turns to the child in the corner and puts on her softest smile, “Beatrice, turn around okay? Face the wall and sing the song your momma taught you. But don’t look. Promise?”

Beatrice makes a small sound, and she must have turned around because theres a rhythmic mumbling from her corner now. Adam watches Marissa pick up the remaining bit of orange sleeve and fold it into a thick band meticulously, “is the girl your sister?”

Marissa shakes her head, and there’s a sudden sadness behind her eyes, “no, sir. She lost her parents when they attacked Reno. We didn’t want to just leave her, so I took her. I didn’t know we’d end up here though.”

She motions with the rolled up fabric at Adam’s mouth, and he understands. He opens his mouth and lets her push the fabric back against his teeth, and she takes a moment to breath before looking to her brother. Adam feels a little guilty for knocking these cadet’s first aid training earlier, because now it might be the only chance he had. Marissa gently covers on Adam’s right hand with hers and grabs onto a small piece of glass dug in just above his wrist.

She leans almost all her weight into pinning his arm down.

And begins to pull.

 

 

* * *

_Four Years Later_

* * *

 

 

Shiro walked into the control room looking just shy of completely awake. He yawned when the door opened—which is a truly good thing, considering how little sleep he usually gets. The only other indication of how tired he is, is his new robotic arm, floating by his side an inch or two lower than normal (Shiro would have been fine to let it drag on the floor behind him, or better yet, leave it in his room. He has to actually think about keeping it close, and it’s too early for that). It’s barely five, the sun isn’t even up yet.

Sam turns to him, looking simultaneously as tired as Shiro is, and apologetic for making another person get up this early. On the screen behind him are several maps and displays, one of which dominates the center of the screen: a thermal map of a Galra wreckage.

“I’m sorry to have to drag you in here so early, but this was important,” Sam stepped to the side and gestured at the screen behind him, “we’ve been going through the crashed ships over the last few days trying to gather anything useful that we can from them. We’ve already finished with the ones in the immediate area, and when we increased the range of the proximity sensors, we found this one here.”

He pointed to the one on the thermal imaging display. The majority of the ship was lacking any heat signatures what so ever, but there was a large section of the ship had several. More than several, actually. There were handfuls of blobs of red and yellow all huddled in neat, even rows towards the rear of the ship. Shiro suddenly felt very awake. He and Sam both exchanged knowing looks.

There were prisoners on that ship, and they’d been stranded there since the fighting had ended.

“Alright,” Shiro crossed his arms, staring at the picture of the ship like it was a living thing, “prepare some of the medical transports. The Paladins and I will take care of getting everyone out. You guys just be ready to meet us outside.”

He excused himself with a cursory nod and headed back towards his room. He turned the comms system on first, sending out a rather loud alarm to the other Paladins. The confirmation that his wake up call had been successful was the handful of groaning that came a few short seconds later, and Pidge’s more colorful “Shiro, what the actual fuck?”.

“Up and at ‘em guys. We’re doing a good, old fashioned rescue mission. Be in the main hangar in ten,” Shiro locked the shoulder apparatus of his new arm in place around his Paladin armor and let the rest of it drift into place.

The order to meet up in the hangar was almost null and void when they all came out of their rooms around the same time. Under other circumstances, he would have just told everyone the plan in the elevator, but he did also have several medical teams to brief on the situation. Or, he would have had to, had Sam not beat him to the punch.

Four emergency transports were idling in the open hanger, and in front of them, four more supply trucks. They’d been stocked with food and water bottles, blankets, and first aid kits for minor injuries, but given strict instructions to leave as much passenger space as possible. They had only just now discovered the wreckage, but it was at least a week old, perhaps more. Those still alive would be starving, dehydrated, and weak. The Paladins piled into one of the land cruisers with Keith in the driver’s seat and Shiro navigating them through the desert.

This really was an old fashioned mission, it had been...a long time, really, since they’d gone and done anything so simplistic. It didn’t hold the same fraught tension that it used to, there was no fear of anyone finding their family members chained up in Galra prison clothes,there wasn’t the threat of someone being captured. It was just there freeing of life, at the very least they could say that.

The ship itself had crashed a little over thirty miles from the base, just outside the ruins of another small city. On approach, Lance climbed out of the roof of their vehicle with his rifle to try and scout for any remaining drones or sentries that might have seen them, but the entire area was abandoned. The convoy parked itself as close to the hull of the downed ship as they possibly could and set themselves up to receive the prisoners.

The ship had a massive hole blown through the center of the stern, which is perhaps why it went down in the first place. But it made entry easier. Hunk and Allura offered to stay near the entrance to help the freed prisoners navigate down the uneven metal and disturbed ground, while Shiro and Keith took point in case there were any remaining Galra inside the ship. Pidge took center with the maps, and Lance brought up the rear.

Any Galra that may have been on the ship were either long gone, or dead. They’d passed several offline sentries, and one or two physical bodies, but nothing alive to put up a fight. Pidge had managed to hack almost every door, and the ones that couldn’t be hacked were forced open through other means. It was a familiar, though morbidly nostalgic, feeling.

The came to one final door, no larger, but twice as thick as the others. It took Pidge longer to connect to the system for this door, but it was made more obvious that this was their destination. The system was too friend to get any real response, but she was able at least to release the locks on the door. Between Shiro and Keith, they pushed the heavy steel open almost easily enough.

“What was that?”

“Was that the door—“

“ _SHH!_ ”

“I hear footsteps, guys!”

“Is it the Garrison?"

“Who is it?”

At least fifty voices were talking over one another behind the cell doors. Some of them sounded either very young, or older, but no one sounded more than thirty, and there had been a handful asking about the Garrison. A sick feeling settled inside Shiro. Were these all cadets and pilots? Was this entire hold full of Garrison prisoners?

“Please don’t be afraid,” he called, as he always called in these situations, “we are the Paladins of Voltron, and we’re getting you out of here.”

A loud round of cheers went up all over the hold. Whooping and screaming, pounding on metal and happy crying went all the way back into the darkness.

Shiro turned to Pidge to see about opening the doors, but she was already ahead of him. She carved open a panel on the wall with her bayard and pulled out a handful of wires, hot wiring some and plugging others into different places. It all connected to her gauntlet and, with the press of a button, doors all the way down the hall flew open. 

A flood of people came running out from every side, to fast and too excited to listen to Shiro’s instructions for very long. It hurt him, it hurt all the way through his chest and in deep inside his heart, that in fact everyone was wearing a Galaxy Garrison uniform of some kind: administrative, volunteer, cadet, combative, they all wore the grey, white, and orange. He refused to stop them though, instead he sent Lance to chase after the front of the pack to lead them out to Hunk and Allura. He, Keith, and Pidge stayed behind to help those that were not in such a hurry.

There was a young woman in the first cell to the left who’s leg was broken, and Shiro pulled two younger girls over to help her walk. A cadet in another cell further down had a head wound that needed to be seen immediately, so Pidge put his arm around her shoulders and began to walk him out. Keith was helping a group of professors climb out of the section of cells that had been wrenched backwards at an odd angle during the crash when someone called to him from behind.

“Excuse me! Please, you have to come help us!”

Keith looked back over his shoulder at the boy who had gotten his attention. His hair was clipped so close to the skin he was almost bald, and in some places, whatever it had been cut with had nicked his scalp enough that there were pale streaks of blood across his dirty skin. He had on just a soiled white tee shirt rather than the orange jacket, but the ripped slacks and worn boots were enough of a Garrison uniform that he was still recognizable as a cadet.

“My sister! She’s stuck in our cell!”

Keith looked back at the professor he was helping climb out of the tilted cell, trying to debate who demanded more attention, but the remaining two professors had made his decision for him, “it’s alright,” the older woman with her hair in a loos braid told him, “we can get out alright. Go help his sister.”

Keith nodded, but still refused to leave them totally helpless. He ejected the spool of grappling line from his gauntlet and tossed it to the handful of people he’d just finished pulling up before turning all his attention to the cadet. The boy was close to panicking, and Keith had to grab him by the shoulders to keep his attention.

“Hey, it’s gonna be fine, alright?” He was trying to do what Shiro would do, lower his voice, talk calmly. By some miracle, it was working, “what’s your name?”

“D-Donny, sir.”

“Donny, okay, what’s happened to your sister?”

“They’re stuck! The cell door won’t open all the way. I had to crawl out because she’s stuck in there with our professor and Beatrice,” Donny’s eyes went wide and he tried to fight out of Kieth’s grip to run back towards the end of the prison, “please, you have to help! He passed out and he won’t wake up—“

Keith stood up and took a step back from the boy, figuring that he should let the panic run its course and let it take them back to this kid’s sister, “alright. I’m gonna follow after you, you show me where your sister is.”

Donny didn’t even give him a response, he just turned and took off over a berm of broken metal and down the dark hallway. Keith followed right on his heels, dodging around debris and fleeing people until the hallway got so dark he had to turn on his flashlight.

Donny stopped in front of the last door on the right and squeezed himself under the door like a spider before Keith could stop him. There was quiet mumbling on the other side of the door, and then an older girl raised her voice, “are you gonna help us?!”

Keith laid down on his stomach and pointed his light under the door, “yes, yes. I’m right here, you don’t have to shout.”

He recognized Donny crouched on the floor by a figure lying on their back in a ruined Garrison flight suit. There was a pair of bare knees on the other side of the figure, and then suddenly a face was right next to his on the other side of the door. She was an older girl, maybe his own age, with a tangled mess of red hair and a scowl on her face. She appeared so suddenly Keith flinched back from the doorway.

“Are you gonna open this door or not?”

Keith blinked, and aggressively crawled back against the door like the girl had stolen his spot, “yeah, I’m gonna try. But I need everyone who can fit under this door to crawl out first.”

The girl sat back on her heels and looked to Donny, talking too quietly for Keith to pick up anything other than an aggressive tone. Finally, she must have said something convincing, because Donny was getting on his stomach and shimmying back under the door like he had been. After him, a smaller hand stuck out from under the door and then an arm, and then a little girl, who really couldn’t have been older than seven, was wriggling out from underneath the door.

She poked out a little mop of black hair and fair skin, and looked at Keith like she’d never seen another human in her life. She was wearing a grey officer’s jacket as a dress, and when Keith gave her a timid wave, she flinched and whispered, “I’m Beatrice” as quietly as humanly possible.

“Hey Paladin, that’s everyone who fits,” the girl called, sticking her face through the bottom of the door, “I’m Marissa by the way.”

“Um, I’m Keith,” something in the upper left corner of the door caught his attention: a long piece of metal twisted inside the rail of the door, “pleasure.”

“Aren’t you supposed to have a big lion or whatever with you?”

Keith was ignoring her at this point, focusing instead on the metal. He stood on his tip toes and pressed as close against the door as he could to see the other side of it, and if he could get it out, then it just might work.

“Hey. Marissa. I need both you guys to get away from the door okay?”

“Sounds counter productive but okay.”

There were dragging noises, and then a quiet groan, and then Marissa gave him an okay. Keith drew his bayard and cut away the extra pieces of metal until he could see the rail of the door. Carefully, he stuck the tip of his bayard against the jammed piece and pushed on it with a burst of pressure. It was enough push to dislodge it, and the force of the door trying to open itself was enough to finish the job.

With a horrible screech, the door shot open almost all the way. There was still a couple feet of if sticking out from the top of the frame, but it was open enough to walk through. Donny ran inside and hugged his sister as though he hadn’t seen her in years, and so did Beatrice.

Keith hurried inside and knelt down by the man laying on the floor, reaching for his neck to find his pulse, “Shiro, there’s guy back here who’s unconscious, his pulse is kinda—“

He should have gasped at the reveal, but he had no air in his lungs to. It felt like it had been kicked out of him. The children in the corner, getting the prisoners out didn’t matter. Even finding a pulse didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Keith knew this man. It had been a long time, but he knew him.

He remembered meeting his face for the first time, his first night at the Garrison because Shiro invited him to dinner at his apartment with him. He remembered getting invested to dinner again every other week with him and Shiro. He remembered the kiss Shiro gave him as he took the hoverbike keys off the hook by the door, tossed one to Keith for another race, and promised to be careful. He remembered coming to class on the first day his third year and he was the one teaching it. He remembered the night he showed up at the apartment, screaming at him because how dare he tell Shiro he would leave him over Kerberos. He remembered running back to that apartment moths later and seeing him crying for the first time ever, because they both heard the news that evening and they both knew it wasn’t Shiro’s fault but he was still gone—he remembers him at the funeral, he remembers, God how could he forget, the man who helped Shiro raise him, he would always remember—

Adam.

Adam was alive, and he was right here under his fingertips. They all thought he was killed, Shiro saw his memorial. And Adam didn’t know about Shiro, neither of them knew—

“Kinda? Keith, his pulse is kinda what?”

“Shiro, you need to get down here right now!”

There wasn’t a moments hesitation. Keith heard the running footsteps not five seconds later. There was a skid of rubber on metal and then Shiro’s shadow was in the doorway. Just like that. He looked back and forth between Keith and the man on the floor, not quite making out his face in the darkness.

“Keith,” Shiro took a step forward into the cell and it echoed like a drumbeat, “what’s wrong?”

“Adam,” Keith looked to Shiro helplessly, like he’d looked to Adam years ago when they lost Shiro, grieving, “it’s Adam.”

After that, nothing. Shiro felt nothing. But not, exactly nothing. He felt so many emotions at once that it felt like nothing, it felt like too many emotions and feeling to fit into words on a screen. Like his entire world had collapsed and then healed itself all at once.

He knelt on the ground by him, by Adam, and he was so scared. He was scared that if he touched him, it would all disappear. But he needed to touch him. He had to feel Adam’s hand in his, he had to run his fingers through his hair again, he had to hold his fiancé for just one more time because he though he never would but now...

...now Adam is a foot away from him and his hands have forgotten how to even touch him.

For a long time, Shiro just stares at him, taking in all the change. His hair is longer now, down almost to his ears, but the ends are cut like they were hacked off jaggedly. His glasses are gone, and the features of his face are furrowed and tense, as though he’d spent the last few years bitterly unhappy. He puts a hand on the exposed skin of Adam’s arms, craving the contact but flinching away when he finds it. All he feels is rough scar tissue. Thin, bumpy skin that wasn’t there six, seven, years ago. Shiro isn’t stupid, and he can put together enough to make his own story.

Adam didn’t die. Shiro would have rather Adam be truly dead than have had to be with the Galra for all these years.

Vaguely, he’s aware of Keith taking the other people out of the cell and putting them on the path with the others. After that, he doesn’t care to focus on anything outside of this cell. He finally find it within himself to hold Adam, to wrap his human arm around the back of Adam’s shoulders and pull him close against his chest. Shiro puts his robotics arm under Adam’s knees and pulls him in completely, burying his face in the rough hair around Adam’s forehead and forcing his lips to remember how to kiss the skin there.

It hurts him to think about how light Adam is now. He was always a few pounds lighter than Shiro, but now he weighs almost half that, at most. Shiro folds Adam’s arms in his lap so they’re out of the way, and now, closer, he can see the scar tissue he felt earlier, and it almost makes him vomit.

It’s not as bad as his own from the gladiator pits, but somehow its also worse. Jagged lines, some thicker than others, crisscrossing like macabre spiderwebs all up the delicate skin, from the backs of his hands, some up until past his elbow. Shiro picks his right hand up in his metal hand and he can tell that the injuries were old, and they’d been treated as well as they could have been, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

Shiro squeezes Adam’s hand gently and hold it to his cheek, nuzzling against the back of it like a child. He squeezes tighter and kisses a scar on the back of Adam’s wrist, forcing himself to again. The sting behind his eyes breaks, and Shiro opens his mouth to draw breath, and finds himself unable to stop crying.

The first sobs takes all the air out of him in one long, cracking scream. He folds with it, until he’s bent over Adam’s body with hie head pressed into Adam’s stomach. It’s hard for him to move from there, sucking in small, quick breaths and then wailing in absolute pain into the cold fabric of Adam’s old suit. His cheeks are hot from the tears and from the exertion of it; Shiro hadn’t truly like this in, perhaps, ever.

When he did sit up, he found he was still holding Adam’s hand. He pressed it to his cheek again, moving it along his skin until he could touch the back of it with his lips. Shiro pressed the cold skin against his lips and sobbed breathlessly into it, because what else was he supposed to do.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, just under the remains of a breath, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Adam...”

His arm fell away slowly, placing Adam’s hand back in his lap gently and returning his own metal arm to its place under Adam’s knees. Shiro drew his knees up under himself and stood slowly, one foot at a time, taking Adam’s little weight until he was standing in the cell cradling Adam against his chest.

He pressed his forehead against Adam’s solemnly, feeling more pain in that moment that he’d felt in all the years he’d left him. Shiro sobbed again, pushing his face as close to Adam’s as he could, until their foreheads and noses were pressed together in some facsimile of what used to be warm mornings in bed together.

“I’m sorry, Adam,” he whispered again, “I should have listened. I never should have left you...”

Shiro took another breath and picked his head up enough to see where he was going to walk, but also keeping it tilted enough that he could keep Adam’s head pressed against his cheek.He felt the weight move softly in his arms each step, and each step that brought him closer to the outside of the ship, he felt more and more terrified. He knew what prisoners became after time with the Galra, and to imagine what incredibly awful things they’d done to Adam was almost too much for Shiro to process.

The path out of the ship felt shorter, the hot desert sun pouring through the open hole in the metal felt scorching compared to the cold lower levels. He needed to get Adam into one of the emergency vehicles, if he had to drag some other poor soul out by their hair.

“Shiro."

Keith.

Keith was coming up to him. Everyone had gathered around the ship to see who it was that he was carrying out in his arms, but the Paladins kept the other people back. Keith was the only one coming forward. He reached out a hand and Shiro, like a cornered animal, backed away from him, pulling Adam closer to his chest. He knew it was Keith, but he was too scared to let Adam go ( ~~again~~ ) just yet. Keith backed away, but still guided him over to one of the emergency vehicles; he must have made them save one for him.

An EMT pulled a gurney from the back and let Shiro lay Adam on it, and she didn’t say anything when he kept their hands laced tightly together. She pushed Adam through the back doors, and by extension, Shiro. He settled on the bench on the opposite side of her, eyes following every touch of her fingers when she took his pulse, checked his pupils, he was watching her like she would become a threat at any moment.

Keith walked into his periphery again, one hand on the door but hanging back, “that’s everyone. We’re heading back to the base once everyone’s set.”

Shiro nodded. Keith did not ask him to move, but something deep inside Shiro had to tell him, he had to say it aloud otherwise the universe would take this last chance from him, “I’ll stay with Adam.”

**Author's Note:**

> lmao i didnt beta this AT all bc it was late and i was just really excited to post it. ill go back over it later or smt
> 
> chapter two will be out hopefully soon pray for me kiddos


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